


It Could Have Been Me

by imexactlythesameasyou



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A lot of sappy dialogue, Angst, Because I like angst, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Sympathy, and also love, it all works out, just trust me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:55:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9437042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imexactlythesameasyou/pseuds/imexactlythesameasyou
Summary: There were so many reasons to hate Draco Malfoy. The first time Harry had met him, he had rattled off his - or rather, his father’s - bigoted political beliefs, while also managing to impress onto Harry his prowess as a player of Quidditch. Since then, he has nothing but solidified his distasteful nature to Harry and Harry’s closest friends. He was a hateful, spoilt Slytherin and the embodiment of everything Harry sought not to be. And yet- and yet.ORHermione and Pansy work together to stop Draco and Harry from making the biggest mistake of their lives.





	1. Chapter 1

Sixth Year

 

There were so many reasons to hate Draco Malfoy. The first time Harry had met him, he had rattled off his - or rather, his father’s - bigoted political beliefs, while also managing to impress onto Harry his prowess as a player of Quidditch. Since then, he has nothing but solidified his distasteful nature to Harry and Harry’s closest friends. He was a hateful, spoilt Slytherin and the embodiment of everything Harry sought not to be. And yet- and yet. Harry sometimes felt himself making excuses for him in his head this year. Almost- sympathising. He didn’t know what the bastard was up to, or for what heinous end he was trying to meet, but he knew enough to know that, whatever it was, he wasn’t enjoying himself. It was so un-Malfoy to not enjoy a cunning plan that it almost made Harry feel sick with it’s wrongness. After all - if Malfoy was hesitant, how awful could the undertaking be? Or maybe he was just changing - and more reluctant to do evil. It seemed that way sometimes, in the weary looks that, more often than not, occupied his face. He ate little on the odd occasion that he actually showed up to meals in the Great Hall, and according to the Marauder’s Map, slept little, too. So when Harry brought up to his friends his concerns of Malfoy having had received the Dark Mark, he simply hadn’t been able to convey that he was scared of that fact for Malfoy, not because of him or what he could do. 

All this concern, or whatever it was, was quite distracting to say the least. One day, in the Great Hall, after Katie Bell’s return to full health, he looked over his shoulder to find Malfoy, looking more sickly and pale than Harry could remember ever having seen him. He rushed after the boy as he left the Great Hall, not entirely sure why, or what he planned to do when he caught up with him. Luckily, or not, he was stopped by a gentle gripping of his shoulder as he reached the doors, met with the ever-concerned face of his best friend, Hermione Granger. 

“Harry, what are you doing? You have to stop this obsession with him- I’ve told you, he’s not a Death Eater.” Harry stared for a few moments after Malfoy’s retreating figure, before repeating her words in his head so as to make sense of them. 

“I don’t- that’s not why I was… for god’s sake Hermione, how am I supposed to know what he’s going to do if you don’t let me follow him?” To Harry, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable request, one that he couldn’t understand being able to deny. Hermione rolled her eyes and dragged him out from the Great Hall and into the Entrance Hall so as not to draw more attention to her seemingly senile friend. 

“Because! None of what he does is your business! Just because you think he’s going to try to kill off the Headmaster or something-” Hermione’s exasperated tone was cut off by Harry, who still had every intention of trying to find Malfoy after this frankly useless exchange.

“I don’t know what he’s trying to do, but it can’t be good.” Another roll of Hermione’s eyes had Harry needing to explain himself. “He’s going to end up killing himself or something, and I can’t just stand by and watch him be controlled by those monsters that call him family.” His teeth were gritted, his emotions only amplified by the fact that he had said them out loud. 

Hermione did a double take. “What? Harry, you’re not making any sense…”

“Yes I am, but if you need a moment to sort out your confusion, I’ll just be on my way.” Harry’s attempts to move were sabotaged by Hermione’s now-iron grip on his shoulder, as she stared at him in wonder. 

“You’re worried about him? Malfoy?” She asked tentatively, adding on the name to make absolutely certain she wasn’t mistaken.

“I - it’s more complicated than that. He isn’t acting like himself and I thought maybe if I just-” It was clear that Hermione was thinking too loudly to hear Harry’s half-hearted explanation so Harry just stopped talking all together, growing more impatient by the second.

“But Harry… He’s, well, he’s Malfoy.” Hermione said eventually, as if this reminder would be enough to pull Harry out of whatever delusion he had made for himself. Finally, Harry lost it, and said what he hadn’t even ever had the courage to fully form thoughts of in his own mind.

“It could have been me, Hermione! I was raised by them too. Not Narcissa and Lucius, but they were the same weren’t they? The Dursleys? If I hadn’t known that I had other people I could point to, to call my parents, how long would it have been, eh? Until I turned out like Dudley, or Malfoy. It was an awful way to grow up. Expectations of who not to be, and all these nasty, hateful thoughts and opinions thrown onto you all the time. The only thing that kept me sane for 11 years was the thought that I wasn’t like them. They weren’t my real family, and so I was able to imagine things that my actual family would tell me- the things they would say to guide me. Malfoy? He didn’t have that. He had nothing to ground him when his parents told him who to hate and who to love. He didn’t have any reason to not believe them, and then, when he comes to Hogwarts, proud to be named a Slytherin, he is told it is the evil house, and is immediately denied friendships by people because of the beliefs that he could only have assumed were the right ones, the ones that everyone held.” Harry stopped to blush at that one, thinking back to his rejection of that handshake, refusing to make friends with someone who didn’t know any better. 

Hermione was stunned, and so Harry kept going, albeit calmer. “And now, he’s so caught up in this world, a web that ties together hate and family loyalty, and he’s looking for a way out. I know he is. I just know it, Hermione, and I want to be able to help him, but how could he possibly ever trust me?” Harry stared at her with searching eyes, pleading with her that she might have the answer, or something that showed that pouring his heart out had been worth it. Instead of words, Hermione eventually opened her arms and pulled her friend in for a hug, comforting him in a way he hadn’t known he needed until that point.

“Oh, Harry”, Hermione murmured into her friend’s shoulder in such a tone that sounded as if something had suddenly started making sense. 

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

After Dumbledore’s Death

 

Pansy stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, staring at her best friend as he packed his things frantically. She hadn’t knocked and he hadn’t lifted his head to see her standing there, and yet he could sense her standing there, attempting to gauge Draco’s state of mind.

“You could help me, you know, instead of just staring at me like I’ve just snogged a Hufflepuff.” The usually cutting tone Draco used when asserting himself with his friends - and enemies, for that matter - was absent, leaving a voice that rather sounded like he was close to tears.

“That’s it, you’re leaving? You’re just packing up your things and going back with Aunt Bellatrix to play happy little families?” Draco apparently wasn’t the only one who was frantic and possibly on the verge of tears. Pansy was distraught at the idea of Draco returning to the Manor, where there had been more than enough rumours about Voldemort’s current residence. 

“Don’t act like you haven’t heard. I couldn’t do it, Pansy. He ordered me to, and I- I couldn’t…” Draco took a few moments to steady his breathing before continuing on. “They’ve asked me to come home, and so I must. If I wasn’t their puppet before, I am now. He said he’d kill me, Pansy, and now that I’ve failed, how do I know that he won’t? This is the best chance I’ve got - I have to do what they ask me to do.” Draco stopped packing and sat down on the bed, exhausted by this very rare display of emotions. “I’m sorry.”

Pansy shook her head, tears filling up her eyes. Draco knew that she wasn’t speaking because she was desperately trying to come up with a solution, some way that he could stay, but it was almost definitely in vain. “What on earth could you possibly be sorry for?”, she settled for saying, joining him on the half-stripped four-poster bed. 

“For leaving you here to deal with the backlash?” Draco offered, “the whole school will be blaming you, along with the rest of Slytherin House.” Draco took a deep, shattering breath and continued, “I’m sorry for making Snape do it - he made an Unbreakable Vow, Pans. And I’m sorry that my failure to kill Dumbledore wasn’t even out of my own decision to rebel against the dark, it was out of cowardice. That’s what we are, Pans, we’re the dark - we always have been. There’s a right and a wrong here, and we’re on the wrong side.” Draco had never been one to apologise before- he’d always felt he’d been completely justified in all his actions. Pansy had never seen the boy so lost - he was so broken from this realisation, and there was nothing she could do. 

“Not us, Draco.” She tried to reach out to her friend. “It’s them. You couldn’t kill Dumbledore because you knew it was wrong. You couldn’t kill Dumbledore because you don’t have that darkness within you, okay? Your life depended on your killing of another wizard, one you didn’t even particularly like. You knew the consequences of your inaction, and you still made that choice. That makes you different from them. And I’ve never been more proud.” Pansy wrapped her arm around Draco’s shoulder so tightly it was as if she were holding all his broken pieces together. 

“We were brought up to think that way - I still… my opinions haven’t changed. Not dramatically, anyway.” Draco’s attempt to express his thoughts would have been lost on most but Pansy knew him well. 

“Your… our beliefs don’t make us evil. Killing innocent muggles and mud- muggleborns -”, Pansy caught herself, “that’s evil. Thinking that just because you’re powerful and of pureblood ancestry, you have a right to decide who lives and who dies - that’s evil. You and I, we care - we’ve always cared about the preservation of tradition and wizard kind. We have a right to be - there is so much magic that will be lost if we let ourselves forget our old ways - but we wouldn’t kill for it Draco. There is a difference between having political beliefs and outright murder.” 

The pair sat in silence for an undetermined amount of time. Pansy removed her arm from around Draco’s shoulder and instead moved it down to grasp his hand, which lay on his knee. Draco’s breaths were loud and infrequent, and it was obvious he was trying to calm himself down so as to speak to Pansy in the most emotionally-void way he could manage at that moment.

“He’s going to kill him, Pansy.” He needn’t say who, Pansy already knew the subject of this new conversation. 

“You’ve always known that, Draco.” Pansy reminded him, as if it served as some kind of a comfort. 

Draco nodded, so as to affirm the truth of her statement, but felt he had to elaborate. “It’s going to be soon, though. He’s getting restless. It won’t last much longer. Five years at most, perhaps even as soon as six months from now. And the only person who could save him, who could prevent it, is dead. Because of me.” His struggle for an emotionless tone at this point was lost - Draco was made to bite his lip to stop it from trembling. 

Pansy took a deep breath. She had never really understood Draco and his obsession with the Boy Wonder. She didn’t know what it was about him that had caught Draco’s interest, but it wasn’t her place to question or deny it. It wasn’t what they were to each other that was baffling to her, or even what they thought of each other that confused her so much. It was what they could be, to each other, what she knew they had the potential to be, that caught her so unawares sometimes, knocking her off of her feet with its insanity.

“Sometimes - I think, Draco - I don’t know what you’re more afraid of. His death, or him dying before you get the chance to set things right between you two.” It was then that Pansy surprised Draco and herself by standing up, and walking out the door. Maybe it was because she couldn’t stand goodbyes, or, more probably, knew that she couldn’t bear to hear the babbling fool deny what they both knew to be true.


	2. Chapter 2

Two Years After The War

Hermione was not a drinker. Sometimes, when her and Ron hosted dinner parties, she would indulge in a glass of firewhisky, but nothing much more scandalous than that. Except for tonight. Tonight she was alone at a bar and she had opened up a tab that just kept growing. She had chosen a muggle bar that night, as she was sure that Ron wouldn’t consider looking in the muggle suburbs for his girlfriend. Or ex-girlfriend, depending on how their next encounter went. It was a nice break, Hermione thought, being surrounded by Muggles who knew nothing of the world that she was currently hiding from. Sometimes she still saw herself as one of them, feeling more at home, sometimes, wandering muggle towns she had never before visited, than she did in her own house. The war may have changed a lot of things for her kind, but it couldn’t change her heart. 

“Rough day, too, huh?” A resigned voice to her left interrupted Hermione’s train of thought so abruptly that she jumped a little. Turning her head she was met with the tired eyes of a woman she had never thought she’d see again. 

“Parkinson?” Hermione’s tone was one of disbelief, and she felt the need to rub her eyes to clarify the legimatacy of what she was seeing, as if to compensate for her alcohol-addled state. 

“Yes, Granger, it’s me.” Pansy considered for a moment, “or is it Weasley now?” Hermione scoffed at that, taking another shot of tequila as soon as she was reminded of her less-than-stable relationship. 

“Decidedly not.” Hermione responded in a cutting tone, not aimed at Pansy, but enough to get the point across. 

“I see.” Pansy, for all her faults, knew when to let something go, and instead ordered herself a drink, seeming to Hermione to be a fair bit more familiar with the muggle alcohol repertoire than one would expect. Hermione side-eyed the woman as she did so, narrowing her eyes in a way that would have been a lot more subtle had she not been so drunk. 

“What are you doing here?” Hermione ventured cautiously - not particularly wanting to get into a conversation with someone she had spent the better part of her youth loathing, but also far too curious to let the point go without mention, and, not too mention, too drunk to care.

Pansy shrugged, as if she hadn’t even considered by she wouldn’t be there, beside Hermione, in a muggle bar. “I was just visiting Draco. I usually need a pick-up after such a venture.”

Whipping her head around to face Pansy full on, Hermione was furrowing her eyebrows so hard Pansy was afraid they may fall off. “Malfoy’s alive?!” She half-shouted, looking completely and utterly confused. 

“Hey, keep it down, we don’t want to get kicked out of here. Not this early, anyway”, Pansy added as an afterthought. When she realised that Hermione was still staring at her as though she had told her she was in fact a muggleborn, she sighed and nodded. “Yeah. He lives around here, now. I come to visit every now and again when the guilt gets too much.” Pansy accepted her drink from the bartender and took a large gulp without so much as wincing as the bitter liquid ran down her throat. 

“But I thought… We all thought-” Pansy, having shared six years of classes with the genius, couldn’t believe that Hermione Granger was now lost for words.  
The dark-haired girl sighed deeply, bringing her hand up to her forehead to rub her temples. She wasn’t sure why she was so willing to reveal so much to Hermione Granger, of all people, but it was nice to have someone pay attention to what she had to say for once. “That’s the way he wanted it. His mother and I are the only two that knew what he did at the time. Since then, he’s told a few, but not en- not many. It shouldn’t matter now, with the Dark Lord gone, Bellatrix dead and Lucius locked up for god knows how many lifetimes, but he’s scared. Scared of what people will think of him for running away instead of choosing to fight against his own family. Or, more accurately, scared of what ‘the Chosen One’ will think.” The last sentence was added on bitterly, as if it were part of a fight Pansy had had a number of times and had yet to win.

Hermione’s features, while still riddled with confusion, were now thoughtful. “He’s scared of Harry? But Harry is probably the person least likely to-” Hermione’s brain had been slowed considerably by the copious amounts of tequila she had consumed in the last few hours, but she eventually caught up with her own thoughts, even if she was unable to express them into any sort of a coherent sentence. “Wait. Malfoy? But Harry was always the one… It’s not like Draco knew.”

Pansy rolled her eyes, not quite believing that she had left one crazy, infuriating genius just to go and spend time with another. “If you don’t start making sense Hermy, I may just have to leave- I don’t care how sober I still am.”

Hermione looked like she was struggling with her thoughts but then she shook her head decidedly. “Don’t worry about it, I’m probably just, you know…” She gestured at the multiple empty shot glasses as compensation for the fact that she couldn’t find the word for ‘drunk’. 

Pansy shrugged, taking the silence as an opportunity to buy another drink. Hermione bit her lip and stared Pansy as she did it, as if she had come up with a compromise within her own mind. “So, Draco… is he up for visitors, or is it more of a self-isolation situation?” Hermione tried to sound as casual as possible but failed so terribly that Pansy almost choked on her drink. 

Clearing her throat as she did so, Pansy cautiously regarded this intoxicated version of her school nemesis, seeming to only remember to narrow her eyes suspiciously after a few seconds. “You want to visit him?” Hermione cocked her head to the side in a way that Pansy was shocked to realise she found quite adorable.

“Errr… I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed to it… But I was kind of thinking of someone else.” Hermione paused for a second, with the distinct feeling that there was something she shouldn’t saying, but since she was not entirely sure what that was, she kept on. “Harry.”

At that, Pansy raised her right eyebrow, not quite sure how to respond. “Harry doesn’t even know he’s alive, how could he have asked to see him?”

Hermione was thrown a little by that question, but before she could gather her thoughts to come up with a response that made some sort of sense, Pansy sighed resignedly and said, “anyway, isn’t he too busy getting hitched to Weaselette or something?”

Something about what Pansy had said had obviously been the wrong thing, because the walls Hermione put up were instantaneous and cold. Hermione rolled her eyes as she sighed in aggravation and ignored the question, choosing instead to catch the barman’s attention. After paying off her rather hefty tab for the night, she elegantly (or at least it was elegant in her mind) slid off the stool and started walking (or stumbling), out of the bar. “Wait, Hermione!” Pansy called after the girl, completely confused as to what had caused her to leave. 

The “Goodbye Pansy,” that came in response dripped with finality in a way that Pansy found oddly unsettling but soon shrugged it off. 

*******

A Week Later

Harry hadn’t left his house in weeks. Kingsley had told him to take a break- sort himself out, but he had just taken it as an excuse to isolate himself. Hermione and, less frequently, Ron, came to visit him, but he didn’t have anything to say to them anymore. They were like strangers to him. It wasn’t until the war had ended that the reality of all those years fighting came crashing down on him and he reassessed all the experiences he’d had. He had gained, and lost, a godfather. His personal hero, Dumbledore, whom he had trusted so unconditionally, had turned out to be, well, human, with the ability to make mistakes, just like everyone else. It was a revelation that shouldn’t have been so shocking, but Harry couldn’t help but feel like he’d been betrayed. Crucial secrets about Harry’s own destiny had been kept from him, and why? So he wouldn’t have a chance to run away? 

The worst part of it was his own guilt. If he had been destined to be the “Chosen One”, the Saviour of the Wizarding World, then surely it was up to him to have saved all those lives. If he had just tried harder - killed Voldemort earlier, maybe back in first year, or fourth, or even fifth, then maybe George would still have his twin, and Teddy Lupin would still have his parents. And Malfoy… No, he couldn’t even bring himself to think about that one. It had always been about Voldemort and Harry. He should have tried harder to keep everyone else safe, and not just let them convince him that they should help because it was for the ‘greater good’. And now - well now, people he loved had to deal with the consequences of his cowardice and incompetence every single day. 

Being an Auror hadn’t helped Harry much in moving on. The fighting that had once come so naturally, had made him feel so in control, became something he dreaded deeply. He couldn’t turn his wand on someone without seeing Voldemort’s face and having every single feeling of panic, horror and fear he’d ever felt, come flooding back all at once. His one visit to a mind-healer - as per the instruction of Hermione - confirmed that he had something called post-traumatic-stress-disorder, but when the healer had offered him some potion to help manage it, he had gotten up, left, and never returned for a second session, some part of him believing that he deserved the anguish the war had caused him. 

He knew there were things that made it better - easier to deal with it. Having a clean house, especially when he cleaned it himself, without the assistance of magic, helped, much to the irritation of Kreacher, who was slowly being made redundant. Exercise helped, too, but unless he was able to complete it within the restrictions of 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry decided it wasn’t worth it. Leaving his house meant having to prepare for the abnormally large proportion of intrusive wizards and witches in what was supposedly a muggle area.

And so there he was, the boy who lived, sitting in an armchair that was falling apart at the seems, in a room cleaner than even Aunt Petunia was capable of making, only half-paying attention to the book he was holding in front of his face. He had settled down into the position about an hour ago, and hadn’t noticed it getting progressively darker in the room as the sun lowered in the sky. The warmth of the fire burning a few feet in front of him added to the cosy atmosphere that invited sleep. It was only 7pm, but Harry was drifting off, his hand gently lowering the book onto his lap, and his glasses slowly sliding further down his nose as his head tilted forward. 

A few minutes later, he was in such a deep sleep that even the sudden roar of green fire in the fireplace failed to awake him. As Hermione entered (one of) the living room(s), she considered waking her subconscious friend, but then decided she’d better leave it. She was about to turn around and leave, resolving in her mind to return in the morning to check on the troubled boy, when she heard him murmuring in his sleep. Looking at his face, she could see him furrowing his eyebrows and she leaned closer to hear whatever it was he was saying in such a distressed tone. “Malfoy… Not Malfoy…” Hermione’s heart broke at that, and it was all she could do to not tear up. It had been two years, and he hadn’t been able to move on. He wasn’t getting better. He wouldn’t get better unless… Hermione seemed to come to a resolve, and, with her heart a little lighter than it had been seconds before, she turned on her heel and headed purposefully towards the entrance from which she had come. 

Pulling out some floo powder from beside the fireplace, she extinguished the natural fire and stepped into it, saying, as she threw down the green powder, “Parkinson residence”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go! So Harry isn't in a particularly good place, but it'll work out, I promise. There WILL be some Draco/Harry interaction soon, I promise, I'm just trying to establish the place our boys are before they meet again. Please leave kudos if you enjoyed it. Comments also motivate me in a way you couldn't imagine, so if you'd like, they're very much welcome. Thank you so much for reading, hope you enjoyed it!!


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